january
“Maybe January light will consume/My heart with its cruel/Ray, stealing my key to true calm”
Pablo Neruda ‘I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You'
february
“I keep this time, even before the flowers/ Sacred to all the young and the unborn.”
Alice Meynell ‘In February’
march
“…As when the sun, concealed/Behind some cloud that near us hangs/Shines on a distant field.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ‘A Gleam of Sunshine’
april
“Those bare and stiff, decaying branches are digits pointing homeward through the sky…”
Edward Thomas ‘In a Farmyard’
may
“Yes I will spend the livelong day/With Nature in this month of May;/And sit beneath the trees and share/My bread with birds whose homes are there…”
WH Davies ‘In May'
june
“The way was waiting for your own adorning/That should complete the broad adorned day” –
Hillaire Belloc ‘(month of) June’
july
“An everywhere of silver/With ropes of sand/To keep it from effacing/The track called land”
Emily Dickinson ‘XXII’
august
“In yellow garb the oat land intervenes”
John Clare 'August' - from 'The Shepherd's Calendar'
september
“In wheat that does not rust/But brightens as it tightens twist by twist/Into a knowable corona/A throw away love-knot of straw”
Seamus Heaney ‘The Harvest Bow’
october
“A field is enough to spend a life in.”
Helen Dunmore ‘Crossing the field’
november
“The month of the drowned dog. After a long rain the land/Was sodden as the bed of an ancient lake/Treed with iron and birdless…”
Ted Hughes ‘November’
december
"Winter dawn is the color of metal/
The trees stiffen into place like burnt nerves."
Sylvia Plath ‘Waking in Winter’